Five Times Addison Wore the Sweatshirt
by winter machine
Summary: The backstory of Addison's much-worn Yale hoodie, in five parts. Features various Shepherds and a Sloan. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

Clearing out the files to ring in 2014! This is also Rach's request, something a little different - in its five parts, the story will touch on pre-show Addison exploring her sexuality, Addison and Derek's marriage, Addison and Mark, and get all the way up to Elizabeth Shepherd's visit to Seattle. Essentially, it's about Addison - isn't everything?

* * *

**Five Times Addison Wore the Sweatshirt**

* * *

It's as awkward as only an orientation weekend can be. She dons a silly sticker with her name on it - it's in blue sharpie because they made the wrong assumption about her name, but at least they look embarrassed about it. Whatever. Honestly, the whole trip seems like it's teetering just this edge of a mistake. She wasn't even planning to apply to Yale - visions of the Captain flirting with her classmates were enough to make her look askance at the application package. But then the Captain took the visiting professor chair at Duke, claiming the heat was better for his health. Addison remembered Duke from her undergrad college tour and is quite certain that while the Captain enjoys the warm weather, it's not because of his health. Then he extended it another year, flying back to the estate when it suited him but staying away from New Haven. So Addison figured she might as well drop in an app. What was the harm? She applied to Columbia too - Archer promised he'd let her go to at least one party with him - "until you embarrass me," he'd clarified - and to give her his outlines. Harvard was an obvious choice after four years at Wellesley. Her boards are great, her grades are better. She's not nervous or anything - yet. But then Yale was the first to get back to her and it's already almost February, cold winds with the sun behind it threatening spring. The idea of having no choice scared her so she accepted the invitation to the admit orientation weekend.

She suffers through tours and meetings, two "cocktail" parties - strictly soda, even though they're overage, something about campus rules. Listens to the same three questions everyone asks: _where are you from? where do you go to school? where did you apply_? until she's cornered by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves by an overeager type in horn-rimmed glasses who stands just a little bit too close as he peppers her with questions. She's always awkward around guys, but this is pushing it. After an all girls high school followed by an all girls college it's hard not to see boys - _guys_, she corrects herself - as stranger huddled across the room at an awkward get together. Even on dates she feels a whole room between them.

"What is your specialty going to be?" he barks.

"My... specialty?"

"You need to pick one."

"Well, yeah, eventually," she says, almost indignant, because are all the kids here going to be this crazy?

"You should pick one now," he says insistently and she tries to edge her way politely around him. She takes a mouthful of Tab, hoping he'll get the hint.

He doesn't. "Maybe I'll pick two," she says finally, to try to throw him off.

"Two? No. You can't have two specialties."

She tries her hardest not to roll her eyes - four years of deb classes and she's learned a few things, but this guy isn't letting up.

"Sam, is it? Sorry to interrupt. I think Professor Elgin is looking for you."

Addison looks gratefully at the interruption, a tall brunette holding a glass of what looks an awful lot like champagne.

"He _is?_" The guy - Sam, or whatever his name is - trots off, and Addison shoots her savior a grateful look.

"He's a live one, isn't he?"

"Really," Addison agrees. "Thank you - hey, is there even a Professor Elgin?"

"No." The other girl grins, and Addison notices her sparkling dark eyes that make it look like she's about to laugh. "But by the time he figures that out, we'll be long gone."

Addison feels a little frisson at the word _we _ - always an outsider, it tugs at her heartstrings to hear herself caught up in another person's plans. "We will?"

"You bet." The other girl takes a sip of her drink.

"Where are we going, um -" she looks at the girl's name tag - "Liz?"

She shakes her head. "Liz is what people who don't know me call me."

"But I-"

"You can call me Elizabeth."

Addison feels warmth in her veins, her limbs, like the word _we. _Strange to feel you know someone so well after just a moment. For some reason she can't take her eyes off Liz - no, Elizabeth. She's one of _those girls_, Addison thinks, she must be. The queen bees she's both envied and feared all her school days, commanding respect and a certain sense of longing.

She hears a whispered _bitch_ as they walk by.

"Don't mind her," Elizabeth says airily. "That's just Chrissy, my ex."

"Your - ex?"

"She was kind of a mistake, but you know how it is-"

She breaks off at Addison's expression.

"What?"

"You're..." Addison swallows, tries not to sound horribly uncool. "Oh, that's..."

Elizabeth grins, and Addison notices again the way her eyes crinkle up and almost disappear. "Haven't you ever met anyone bi before?"

Addison blinks.

"Gay?" Elizabeth suggests.

Addison flushes, hoping her embarrassment isn't too obvious but knowing it's in vain - fair-skinned redheads don't get the privilege of hiding their shame. She hates feeling like this - like everyone else knows things and she doesn't.

"Most people actually do know someone bi or gay, they just don't know they know - you know what I mean?"

Addison doesn't. "Sure," she lies bravely.

"Good." Elizabeth nods decisively. "So, shall we?"

That word again: _we. _

Elizabeth avoids the overrun pizza places, finds a hole-in-the-wall on Wooster where the thin-crust is somehow out of this world. Addison's chilly in her leather jacket; it's almost February, that time of winter when no one knows how to dress for the weather and everyone's caught off guard more often than not. She has her walkman in her purse and they stroll up the hill together, sharing the foam earpieces to listen to that Tracy Chapman song it turns out they both love. Addison always rewinds it to listen again whenever it comes up; it's gotten so she can almost pinpoint the spot in the tape.

_City lights lay out before us_

_And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder_

_And I had a feeling that I belonged_

_And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone_

"So, do you want to-"

She doesn't want it to be over. She's leaving tomorrow, classes and cocktail parties are a thing of the past, but this part -

Not yet.

They end up in Elizabeth's dorm room, a little prison box of a place that somehow she's made into something more. Maybe it's the postcards clipped to a string across the top of her desk - black and white arty-looking photographs that make her feel a bit bigger to look at them. Or the red flannel sheets on the bed. Or the little bitty tree - more of a branch in a pot, really - that's sitting on the floor in one corner even though it's practically February.

"Your tree's still up," she says, then hates herself for being so stupid.

But Elizabeth just nods. "That way it's almost like it's still Christmas, don't you think?"

_That's exactly what I think. _Addison flushes, unused to being understood. "You, uh, you like Christmas?"

"Love it." Elizabeth smiles, and her whole face changes when she does so. Her lips, so bow-like in repose, stretch widely, and her big dark eyes scrunch up with happiness. Addison just watches, drinking in her warmth.

"I do too," she admits. "I know it's like, uncool to -" And then she breaks off, horribly embarrassed to have implied Elizabeth wasn't cool. But she somehow smoothes that over too.

"They don't know what they're missing," she shrugs. "My baby sister-"

"-still believes in Santa?" Addison finishes for her, overeager.

"Amy?" Elizabeth snorts. "No way. She hardly believes in things that _are _real. Santa's a lost cause. I was going to say she makes fun of me about it and says Christmas is for saps. I just - I've always loved Christmas. The whole season."

Addison fingers the tinsel on the small tree. "I never like to take mine down either."

"Your tree?"

"Yeah - I mean, the one in my wing" - if Bizzy knew how long she left it up there, she wouldn't be pleased; she knows for a fact Bizzy thinks her love of Christmas is t-a-c-k-y. "-I'm not supposed to or whatever but the day maid knows I like to keep it up at least a month so she doesn't say anything when -" she breaks off, seeing Elizabeth staring at her. "What?"

"Nothing," she says quickly.

Addison twists the sleeve of her fair isle sweater. She hates this, feeling different when she wants to feel the same. It's the words she uses maybe, the clothing she wears - why does she always feel so _wrong_ - and then there's tinsel in her hair, soft lips against hers, and she suddenly feels right.

Elizabeth draws back after an all-too-brief moment. "Sorry," she murmurs.

_I'm not. _That's what Addison would say if she were brave but words fail her because _oh my god a girl I kissed a girl what would Bizzy say? _and also because she can't take her eyes off those lips now. They're something entirely different from what they were five minutes ago because now she knows what they can _do. _ She's not sure she has the wherewithal to command her body but something draws it forward.

Maybe because it's January but it's Christmas in this room, or because she's awkward but somehow smooth in this room, letting Elizabeth gloss over her mistakes and _we _over her loneliness. She's inches in front of her, never done anything like this before.

"Addison-"

She kisses her back. She's poised to _analyze _it - to wonder and wait and take it apart but all of that falls away when their lips touch again. She's utterly different from anyone Addison's ever kissed, ever touched this closely - her body is softly firm, pliant and yielding where Addison is used to muscle, jutting bone, swelling arousal. For long moments they just stand by the reflected light of the out-of-date tree and let lips, tongue, hands explore for them. This is the first time she can remember _wanting_, tasting, testing, teasing - instead of letting herself be acted upon. It was always _yes_ and then they ... did stuff. Or _no _and then she hoped they'd stop. It felt good sometimes, some better than others, but mostly clumsy fumbling and - oh! Elizabeth's worked her palms underneath Addison's sweater - her hands are only at her waist but they sear her anyway, burning warmth where she's been cold all day. A shiver starts in the knobs of her spine and works its way south. She doesn't know what she's doing here, why how who but _oh _her mouth works its way round with wonder again and again as her breathing speeds up.

Then it's over and she's alone again, gasping for breath. "Addison, look, I-"

"Please don't stop."

"Okay, but I just want to make sure-" Elizabeth is breathing heavily too. Addison can't help reaching to tuck a lock of her shiny dark hair behind her ear. All her life she's felt as if there was a script that others had, some set of rules for the game that no one showed her, so she was always a step behind, confused or awkward. For the first time - and the irony isn't lost on her that this is the first time she's done it - she feels like she knows what she's doing.

"Please," she says again, more firmly this time, and that's all it takes. They're tangled up in each other again, those succulent lips tugging at the flesh on Addison's neck while her fingers trace ticklish agony along the sensitive flesh at her hips. They make short work of her sweater - her Calvins are harder but Elizabeth, who must have her own, knows the trick. Addison stands in front of her in simple if unmatched bra and panties and is somehow alarmed at how unselfconscious she feels. Why is it in the gaze of this near-stranger she feels so unafraid? It's the warmth of her eyes, she thinks, the heat that come off of her. She doesn't feel gawky and overly tall standing there in her underwear. She feels actually beautiful.

_You're beautiful_. Elizabeth says it a beat later like she heard her, like she's in her head. Then they're both in her bed, on flannel sheets that warm them while Elizabeth's trailing fingers leave her shivering, shuddering. Her lips are warm, her tongue warmer. She knows what she's doing - Addison's never felt this before, deftly flicking fingers, confidence. Her hips undulate of their own accord; moans escape her lips. She thinks _how _and _why, _thinks about how she almost missed the train because she didn't want to come and thinks of the train, the train, chugging through the station faster and faster the engines throbbing and pulsing and-

"_Elizabeth!"_

She collapses against the pillows, sweat-soaked and exhausted. "What-" she pants, then tries again. "What the hell was that?"

"I guess that was your orientation," Elizabeth smirks. Addison hits her with a pillow and they both laugh. Addison comes down slowly from her high, breasts heaving, their tops still rosy from exertion. She catches Elizabeth looking at her, lets her dip her tongue gently into rise of her chest. Elizabeth kisses her way gently, so gently, down from the valley between her breasts to the dip of bone at the end of her belly. She shivers as sensation rips through her.

"You're cold."

Her teeth are starting to chatter. The heat of the moment drains from her. "Y-yeah."

Elizabeth jumps out of bed and Addison watches her legs as she walks away, the lean muscle, the length of them. _She's beautiful._

"Here." She passes her a new-looking gray Yale sweatshirt. Addison's always shunned them because of the Captain but she's here and she's freezing so she pulls it on.

"You're shivering." Elizabeth slides into bed next to her in just her panties and takes her in her arms.

"Are you c-cold too?"

"No," Elizabeth whispers, kissing her neck, trailing warmth down to her shoulder. "I'm good."

"Elizabeth." She loves the way the syllables sound, loves testing them with their tongue, teasing each one out. Suddenly curious, she asks "Is that what your family-"

"They call me Liz."

"Oh." She nestles in closer, and between the sweatshirt and the other girl she's warm now. She's good.

"What does your family call you?"

"They don't," Addison says, as breezily as she can but maybe Elizabeth hears her sadness too, because she pulls her closer, into her arms. Addison's new at this. She's had sex before and everything, three guys - well, two, because Chip might not count because it was over so fast. But no one's held her like this, skin to skin, she's never felt the full weight of the warmth of limb and chest, belly and thigh, like she does now. It's such a peaceful feeling really. Safe. She wonders briefly how she can be both a romantic cliche and a girl who kissed another girl - though she supposes it IS the 80s and anything is possible. The last thought she has as she drifts off to sleep is less a thought than a name: each languorous, sensually swept syllable of her name: _Elizabeth._

Sunlight streams in the small leaded windows to wake her. Their bare thighs are still tangled, dark and red hair mingling on the flat pillows. She swallows coffee and her words, doesn't ask _is this real? _and tries not to think it until she's at Phelps Gate waiting for a taxi to the station, her bomber jacket keeping her surprisingly warm this time and then she figures out why.

She realizes she's still wearing the Yale sweatshirt.

"Sorry, I - let me give it back-"

"No, keep it." Elizabeth's dark eyes are very soft. "It looks better on you."

"Thank you." The words stick in her throat - how can they be politely sufficient and at the same time utterly wrong? She doesn't know how to say _I might be a different person. _Or all out: _I almost died today. _Is that what it felt like? Death, reborn? Or maybe she was drunk. Or maybe it wasn't real, except Elizabeth is warm and alive under her hands when she hugs her goodbye and the firm contours of her body are as real as anything.

"Call me," Elizabeth says softly, just against her ear and she shivers even though she's warm.

"I will."

She intends to, she does, but she goes home and wraps herself in a comforter against the chill of the estate and then wraps herself back into her old life. She gets into Columbia, chooses New York, and spends the summer sailing.

She doesn't call.


	2. Chapter 2

_He's cagey but he's cute. _That's what she tells Savvy in a letter - they still write handwritten letters, even though Addison has had an electric typewriter for two years, and has her eye on one of those new word processor things with the little screens. However it's written, her description is accurate: he has twinkling blue eyes, a mop of messy hair, and she catches him checking her out in Gross Anatomy lab four times before he finally asks her out. She decides she can be cagey too.

"I barely know you."

"What?" He looks offended. "I'm your lab partner! That means we're practically married."

Addison rolls her eyes. "We have Sam and Jennifer in our lab group too, so does that make us bigamists or whatever?"

"Polygamists?"

"I said whatever." She fights an urge to stick her tongue out at him. He keeps smiling at her and she blushes. "Look, Derek-"

"I'm not asking for bigamy or whatever," he says, holding up a conciliatory hand. "Just a coffee."

"I drink coffee with people I know," she responds primly.

"Okay, what do you want to know?"

She has to think for a minute. "Uh... what's your favorite color?

He blinks. "Blue."

_Like your eyes? _"Baby blue?" she tests teasingly.

"No! Dark blue."

"Indigo," she nods, pretending to tick it off. "Okay. And, let's see - favorite subject in college?"

"Stats."

"_Really?_"

"Of course not."

She smiles then. "Okay, do-over. More personal. How many siblings do you have?"

"I have four sisters."

"Four!" Her eyes widen automatically. "What are their names?"

He shakes his head. "That's all you get for now. The rest you'll just have to take on faith."

"Faith?"

"Goes well with coffee."

"Oh, you still want to have coffee?"

"Very much so. Even more now, if possible, so what do you-"

"Oh, fine," she sighs, and has to pretend not to be flattered. She likes the way he looks at her, like she's the only girl in the room - well, okay, she _is_ the only girl in the room. She's wearing her Yale sweatshirt even though it's still humid early fall; they had a quiz today and she needed it wrapped around her, to feel that boost of confidence and warmth. He asked her about it - _did you go to Yale? _She just said _nope, _and let him wonder while she relaxed into soft fleece. She should have known it would change her life, again.

They drink coffee on a Thursday, eat dinner on a Friday, and by Sunday they're eating breakfast in Hewitt with fresh-from-the-shower wet hair and sex-sleepy eyes. She knows more now: his favorite band is the Clash, his favorite food at Thanksgiving is the stuffing sandwich he makes at midnight, and the city he most wants to visit is Venice - for the boats, he says. He has a thing for gondolas.

Dates turn into study dates and finals are as intense as any honeymoon. It's medical school: they have time only for learning, eating, sleeping, and sex, and often one or two of those have to fall short. But never the first or the last. They feed each other bits and pieces of their past like tastes of strawberries or cake: her one track and field trophy, his desire to learn to fish; the scar on her jaw from a bike accident; the braces he wore until he was 15. Months swallow months and then he invites her home with him Easter weekend; the alternative, with Bizzy in Europe with her social secretary and the Captain who knows where, is an empty estate, so she agrees.

But his family. They're so-

_family. _

There's noise and people, sisters and their boyfriends, a whole house for all these people smaller than just the wing she grew up in.

He's somewhere between sheepish and happy with all these women circling around him, clucking over him. She counts two sisters and his mother - though they're loud; they sound like more. Maybe it's the others she can hear in the next room.

"This is Nancy-" the skinny one grins at her - "Kathleen" - the shorter one, head in a book, nods in a friendly way. "Ma, where are the others?"

"Derek!" A little dark-haired blur runs through the room. "You're home!" She pauses in front of them, sizes Addison up. "Who're you?"

"This is Add-"

"Where's Mark?"

"Amy, this is my friend Addison."

Amy tugs on the hem of Derek's sweater. "But where's _Mark,_ Derek, you said he was coming home with you!"

Derek shoots Addison an apologetic look before turning back to his sister. "Amy, he's going to try to come tomorrow, but-"

"Why not today?" Amy looks accusingly at Addison. "Because _she's _here?"

"Amy," Derek says sharply. "Of course not. Look, why don't you go-"

"Is she giving you trouble?"

Addison glances up at another voice, low and musical, and then her stomach drops.

"Nah, she's just being Amy," Derek sighs. "But hey, this is Addison - Addie, meet my oldest sister, Elizabeth."

Dark hair, shorter, blunter than she remembers. She's cut it. Those dancing dark eyes, the cheekbones. Addison's mouth is dry. She can hardly breathe.

"Call me Liz," the other woman says coolly, and Addison looks away so Derek won't see the pain she knows has registered on her face.


	3. Chapter 3

It's a while before she wears it again - she thinks she might have forgotten about it except for the new house and the Hamptons house and the packing and the repacking and then she sleeps alone four nights in a row. It's different when she's operating too because the adrenaline carries her through. That and the praise.

_You don't have to please everyone_! That was Derek, scolding her about something - probably her parents, that one last-ditch attempt she made to reconcile with them - but he doesn't mind when it's him she's trying to please. When she crawls over him at night with remorse or request. Giving and taking feel the same; maybe that's what marriage is. A sequence of things, a cycle. Give, take, give. Kiss, fight - what? They've stopped fighting for the most part, so maybe it's silence that will end the cycle. He wanted a baby; she wanted a second certification - that was the last fight she could remember. They didn't have a baby. She has double-barreled credentials instead and Derek has a room for his fishing rod collection. They have nine nieces. They have five nephews. Can't that be enough?

He stopped asking about babies, prodding her about the pill, making comments when they see his sisters. His mother looks at her with dissatisfaction or worse but Derek still insists that his mother loves her. _Can't you see her face? _she wonders. _Does that look like love to you? _But maybe he can't. He didn't know about Amy. Didn't know, and she only thinks about this tentatively, testing it, because it was so long ago, but he didn't - doesn't - know about Liz.

He commented a few times, in the beginning, that she seemed to be hitting it off more with Nancy and Kathleen, and of course she bonded right away with Amy. Once Addison admitted on that first visit that she, too, was excited for Mark's arrival, she and Amy became fast friends. Fast sisters. Everything Amy did was _fast _and Addison helped pry her out of a smashed-up car, force breath back into her drug-shriveled lungs, commit her - as easy as signing a paper - to forcible help. _It's called help even if you don't want it._ Derek never outright said _What about Liz? _but he made a few jokes, a couple of comments here and there. _ Do you even know my other sister's name? _he asked her once and Addison flushed, suddenly as sensitive, tingling, as that long ago night. _Of course. Liz is great,_ and she stammered a little which he thought was cute and then he was distracted and he didn't bring it up again.

She made a point the next Thanksgiving to sit near Liz. Not next to her - privately she worries she'd _feel _something, that the electric current Liz started might not have turned off. Amy plopped down between them and helped herself to half of Addison's sweet potatoes, most of her cornbread. _I'm starving, _she complained, over and over, but she was so skinny, almost wraithlike. Was that the last Thanksgiving they were all together? Then it was Amy who didn't remember anyone's name. Not even her own.

"Addison, are you listening to me?"

She raises sleepy eyes toward her husband. She knows it annoys him when she does this, drifts off when he's talking, lets her mind slide loose-limbed over the connections and pieces of her past. She's sorry, she's always sorry.

"I'm listening."

"I said I need to go to the hospital."

"Okay," she says slowly. Tries to remember why he's bothering to spell it out for her. Did they have plans or something? Her head feels slow, logy.

"I'm sorry about dinner, but we can do it another time."

Oh. "It's okay," she responds automatically.

"You're not mad?" For a minute his eyes twinkle like they used to.

She just shakes her head.

"Then why are you wearing that old sweatshirt?" His voice is light now, almost teasing.

Addison pulls the afghan tighter around her legs, doesn't answer.

"I'll be back tonight if I can." He leans over to kiss her, his scarf dangling against the letters on the sweatshirt.

"Happy birthday, Addie."

The door closes loudly. She sits cross-legged for a while, opens and then closes a medical journal. Pours a second glass of wine. A tear - just one, Bizzy would be only a _little _displeased - slides down her cheek and wets the fabric of her old sweatshirt. She dials the phone with trembling fingers.

"You busy? No? Want to come over? Yeah, I'm fine. Derek's - no, but I'm fine. Okay, see you soon. No, I don't need anything, Mark, I said I was fine! Okay. Okay, see you in a few minutes."


	4. Chapter 4

"What are you doing here?"

"That's a nice greeting."

Addison doesn't open the brownstone door all the way. She stands in the big empty foyer, teeth chattering even though she's got layers on, she's wrapped in Derek's flannel bathrobe, but she just can't get warm.

"How did you-"

"My sister called me."

"That's a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality," Addison scowls. She's exhausted and cramping and just wants to sleep.

"Not Nancy," she says softly. "Amy."

Oh.

"Now would you let me in?"

"Are you here to shrink me?"

"Kathleen's the shrink, Addison, not me."

"You're kind of a shrink."

She's a professor, as the canvas bag slung over her shoulder attests. Addison likes to think of her teaching eager young medical students. Using her mind, not her healing hands, and -

"Addie, the door?"

She lets her in. She's a Montgomery still - or maybe again - and so making drinks is her first thought but she knows she can't have alcohol so she puts up a pot of tea instead. It makes her insides twist to be domestic in this kitchen, in their home, but she does it anyway. Liz bustles around like she knows the place, like she hasn't stayed away all these years, didn't even come to the hot dog Thanksgiving, just heard the story over and over again.

"So - _are _you okay?"

Addison sits on the couch, pulling her legs up under her automatically. Derek's bathrobe warms her bare skin but makes her think, inexorably, of the flannel sheets she left out for the garbage pickup the next morning. She has to sleep in cotton now, which isn't nearly as warm - but that's just as well, because _he's _always warm, hot even, and -

"Addie, what are you doing?"

"Thinking."

"Funny, Mom said it seems like you weren't thinking at all."

Addison's head snaps up. "Mom - said something?"

"She's not exactly the quiet type, is she?"

Addison hides a smile, but there are tears in her eyes. She hasn't been able to face the betrayal of her mother-in-law; somehow, even though she's suspected all along that Carolyn doesn't approve of her, she knows this justified disapproval will hurt worst of all.

"Is she - does she -"

"She's surprised. Confused." Liz pauses. "We all are."

"I'm sorry." Addison's voice is high and thin. Mark's jacket is hanging on the banister. He might be back here tonight. She doesn't know the rules for this, isn't sure how to do anything except nestle the warm cup of tea against her belly and pretend the emptiness is Derek's fault.

"No one's heard from him," Liz says.

"I tried calling him-"

"He wouldn't even call _us_ back."

"Liz, when will-"

"Call me," she says with surprising gentleness, "if you need anything."

Addison waits until Liz is down the front steps and the door is deadlocked before she lets the tears come. She pulls the robe tighter around her battered old Yale sweatshirt, which smells like medicine now, and her sweat, and thinking about washing it just makes her cry harder. Mark finds her on the foyer stairs with her head resting on her knees, weeping into her own lap. He doesn't ask her why or question what she's done, just carries her upstairs - she's weaker than she realized, shaky legged, and he doses her with the painkillers they prescribed.

He falls asleep first. She calls a travel agent, and boards a flight to Seattle in the morning. Staring out the window, she says _I'll miss you _to the skyline and _I'm sorry_ to the clouds. Her fingers dance across the keypad a few times over the next months but she never calls.


	5. Chapter 5

_Is he really gone? _That's what Liz emails her and Addison can't bring herself to reply so she's not even that surprised when the next email says _I'm coming._

"I was in Seattle," that's the first thing she says when she bustles into Addison's beach house a few days later like she's been there before.

"Oh. Okay. How's-"

"Derek's Derek." Liz shrugs. "He's always the same."

"He said he wasn't the same person in Seattle as he was in New York." She blurts this fast, not even sure why.

Liz shakes her head. "Just because he thinks he's different doesn't mean he is."

"Is he okay?" Addison refills her wine glass.

"He's Derek. But he - you know, he misses him."

Addison swallows hard. "We all do."

Liz - even after all these years she's never tried _Elizabeth - _sits down heavily on the couch. "We should have been there."

"I - wish we had been." Addison's voice trembles. "But he wasn't conscious, and - Derek kept me posted, but..." and then her voice trails off. Liz's dark eyes are a mirror of her own guilt, and Addison's aware of what she's thinking: that Mark would have come, for them. Whether they were conscious or not, whether Derek kept him posted or not. He would have been there.

"We were his family."

"That doesn't change just because we weren't there," Addison whispers, either to reassure Liz or herself. "He knew, okay? He _knew_," and she's pretty sure that's what Mark would say and what he'd want them to know so she says it one last time with finality: "He knew."

"I just - can't believe he's not coming back."

Belief is the hardest part of loss, Addison thinks now, with the wisdom of four and a half decades.

Liz glances around. "Does Amy really live here? Derek said she did."

"She lives next door." Addison avoids calling her _Amelia,_ knows it's a sensitive point with the family.

"You stayed with her," Liz marvels. "She always liked you best of all the sisters."

"I'm not her sister."

Liz levels her gaze. "Yeah, you are."

Addison shivers a little; there's a cool breeze coming in through the open windows. Her hair, unwashed, uncombed, floats around her shoulders. She's asked Jake for time to grieve, to hold Henry quietly and cry that Mark can't hold his child, to look at the ocean and wonder how the waves can keep pounding the sand when they should be curling in on themselves and mourning the way she is.

She hasn't showered in three days, hasn't taken off her old Yale sweatshirt. The L is starting to come undone after all these years. She plays with a loose string - don't pull, everything could unravel - and catches Liz staring at her again.

"I can't believe you kept that."

Her heart pounds. "You want it back?" Addison doesn't look up, not sure she wants to hear the answer.

"It looks better on you."

"Liz-"

"Call me Elizabeth."

There are tears in the back of her eyes. "Elizabeth," and she says the word slowly, tasting it. Savoring the syllables. "I'm sorry, about everything-"

Two fingers touch her arm, gently, but they sear her nonetheless. "I'm not."

Addison's cheeks burn with memory. "I didn't know if you-"

"Remembered? Oh, come on, Addie. You're not exactly forgettable."

She's blushing so hard it hurts. Which she thinks is probably less cute at 47 than it was at 22, but _Elizabeth_ is looking at her with those dark eyes and 25 years later she still finds herself suddenly beautiful within that gaze. It still hurts, but...

"I remember-" she stops. It's too much, too late - or is it too soon? - but she somehow wants Elizabeth to know how many times she's thought of that night. Gone over in her mind the tiny things that could have changed in her universe to make her do it differently. To make her call. Why hadn't she picked up the phone? Why didn't she learn her last name? Why did she have to pretend at Easter?

Elizabeth is looking at her sadly now, but there's something behind the sadness too - understanding? Hope? Addison basks in it a moment longer, lets it warm her along with the cozy sweatshirt.

"I have to go." Elizabeth stands, breaking her gaze. "You can - call me, Addie. But this time actually do call me, okay?"

This time, she actually does.


End file.
